The Church of St. Serena is just ahead, Your Excellency."
Stepping into the exquisitely beautiful white plaza beside the road, Krestai, dressed in a black trench coat and carrying a silver-plated metal case, slowed his pace slightly and glanced back at the seemingly quiet and harmless petite girl behind him.
Seeing her casually nod, her face still bearing that indifferent expression, the chosen one silently continued leading the way, slowly walking towards the spire of the church at the end of the plaza.
In this quiet night, the dark exterior of the Church of St. Serena almost blended into the night sky behind it. The towering spires and weathered bell towers were like stone monsters guarding a sacred veil, silently watching the two tiny figures crossing the pristine plaza, seeing them push open the church doors and plunge into the deeper, darker darkness.
The passageway leading to the main prayer hall was dark and gloomy. During the day, a few rays of light would filter through the stained-glass windows high above, but now only an endless black curtain obscured the view. Light and heavy footsteps echoed in the silent, deep passage.
But as if deliberately breaking the tranquil and solemn atmosphere, a clear, melodious voice, like singing, rang out, carrying the unique vitality and romance of an innocent young girl.
"Won't you tell me about your church? Explain the origin of its name, how many years it has withstood the test of time, and how many devout believers it has nurtured… Well, although I don't really care about these things, I must say, the architectural taste of your church is far superior to that 'River and Sea Church' of the Storm Church."
It seemed that all the priests in the church had fallen asleep in this peaceful night. Beyond the open door at the end of the passage, an even deeper darkness enveloped the vast prayer hall and the rows of benches along the aisle.
"…If you had come during the day, you would have witnessed a purer and more sacred scene."
Kresta Cecima moved with ease in the darkness, traversing the hall unimpeded between the benches on either side, until he reached the right side of the arched altar at the far end, finally stopping before a quietly opened hidden door to wait.
The "girl" behind him needed no guidance; she strolled along like a foreign tourist, admiring the light, slender lines of the dome in the darkness, her right fingertips tracing the backs of each row of wooden benches.
"Twenty-two rows of seats, twenty-two light-piercing holes." She finally reached the end of the long hallway and caught up with Kresta. "Your goddess is quite particular about numbers."
The chosen one had heard many such comments along the way—comments that seemed to be directed at the gods, yet were difficult to categorize as disrespectful—and knew the best approach was to ignore them.
"Please follow me."
He strode forward, entering another dark and narrow corridor behind the hidden door. The lights on both walls were extinguished, making the atmosphere even more somber and oppressive, as if countless eyes hidden in the shadows had opened, casting greedy and cold gazes at the two living beings in the passage.
"The underground ahead is the core of the magic array where you store magic… and the power of your believers' prayers. Do I need to go there?" To keep up with Krestai's seemingly quickened pace, Alice had to jog a few steps before finding a chance to add her complaint, "By the way, has anyone ever told you that you're not very gentlemanly, never considering the difference in stride between men and women?"
Hearing this, Krestai, who had been treating the "girl" as "He" the whole way, seemed to finally remember the height difference between them and slowed down.
"Ahead is the true underground of St. Serena's Church, the Charis Gate… Yes, we need to go through the gate to the deepest part. Also, I just hope to save some time on the way…"
She chuckled, interrupting the chosen one's serious explanation.
"Oh? If you really intend to save time, then why did you walk with me for nearly three blocks before refusing to call a carriage? Or perhaps taking a public carriage would have been much more convenient.
Are you perhaps feeling nervous being in the same enclosed space as me?" ...
Unexplainable. He couldn't bring himself to say either explanation.
Taking public transportation with someone who seemed to be a high-ranking spirit? Or hailing a taxi?
No matter how he imagined it, it was an extremely bizarre scene.
According to past practice, Krestai should have overcome these problems with the help of his teammates, but this time was different. The goddess's oracle indicated that he should try to complete this mission entrusted to him alone.
The goddess seemed unwilling to let other ordinary Night Watchers know the details about this being codenamed "Mirror Witch."
But...
She was right; Krestai did indeed harbor a near-fearful wariness towards Her.
The Night Watcher team leader who had confronted Him head-on, "Nightmare" Mooney Kahn, was, in a sense, beyond redemption.
As a member of the sleepless order, he didn't need much sleep; an hour or two during the day was enough for a full day's rest.
Mooney Kahn was remarkably strong and fortunate to have survived the initial, most difficult phase, but he succumbed later.
He couldn't sever the part of himself that had been corrupted by Him, and even developed another self in the process. This
was Nightmare Mooney, a personality obsessed with dreams and fascinated by the person in his dreams.
Or perhaps it was his second personality, a consciousness that only revived in dreams.
Because this personality, born of corruption, craved dreams, Mooney Kahn had to live a normal life, getting enough sleep every day, otherwise his other self would take control, forcing him to "voluntarily" fall asleep and enter dreams.
He could no longer enjoy staying up all night like other sleepless individuals.
What left many high-ranking officials who knew about the "playing method" speechless was that this alternate personality born from the "Nightmare," so engrossed in exploring dreams, inadvertently conformed to the core behavioral rules contained within the potion, causing him to rapidly digest the potion's residue.
Perhaps in a few months, he would meet the requirements for advancement to Sequence 6.
Of course, considering various unstable factors, the Church would likely not allow him to advance.
But the strangest thing was that Muni Kahn's faith had never wavered; he remained a devout believer in the Goddess, only his thoughts seemed to have been distorted by external forces, like someone unfortunately suffering from some kind of mental illness.
Kresta Cecima expressed his disdain for this lucid madness.
"...Follow me closely." He repeated his previous words in the silence around him, then walked straight down the corridor, descending the stairs into the underground. His dark green eyes were calm and still, his lips were tightly pressed together, and his expression was slightly cold.
He heard His clear laughter behind him.
"I'll let you go for now."
Kresta didn't know what His words meant, and his intuition told him it was better not to know, so he remained silent and continued walking until he stopped in front of a large black iron double door engraved with seven dark holy symbols.
"In the past, members of the city's night watch team would be on duty here, but tonight is a special case. There will be no interference from others until our conversation ends." Krestai pointed in a certain direction. The kerosene lamp in the duty room was not lit, and the doors and windows, which were neatly embedded in the wall like prison cells, remained silent in the darkness, without a sound.
"Is he afraid I'll harm even more people?" Recalling the eerie silence she'd encountered along the way, Alice could only speculate in this direction.
Krestai didn't answer. His dark green eyes silently turned pitch black. He lifted the silver-white metal box with his left hand and pressed his right against its surface. Instantly, as if breaking through a formless barrier, the box's silver surface emitted a starlight-like glow.
As the chosen one opened the lid, a pure white bone sword, no more than a meter long, slowly floated up.
"Every night, the sealing power behind this door reaches its peak, no longer suitable for living beings." Krestai exhaled quietly, gripping the bone sword with his left hand while turning to gaze at the girl's calm expression. "We're almost there...please be patient."
Alice quickly understood the necessity of his deliberate emphasis on patience.
The heavy black iron door before them creaked open, making a teeth-grinding sound.
Before she could even make out what lay in the darkness beyond the door, countless fine, hair-like black threads began to emerge from the cracks. Only when illuminated by the faint glow emanating from the bone sword in Kreste's hand did the initial black threads, which had reached the outer area, cease their agitation and return to a lifeless stillness.
But these eerie black threads were merely still; a chilling, piercing coldness, a shivering dread, enveloped the air around them, as if the realm of the dead had invaded reality, inspiring fear.
"Stay close to me,"
the Chosen One said, actively controlling the sacred object in his hand, causing its light to spread outwards, enveloping the girl behind him.
This left Alice, who had hoped to observe his reaction, rather bored, and she could only sigh and obediently follow him towards the black iron gate from which the black threads extended.
If they were in the same pitch-black darkness, Klein would definitely be much more interesting than this stern-faced man. First of all, his rich imagination would terrify him...
Well, although she wasn't incapable of dealing with a man like Krest, this wasn't a place for fun, and she wasn't in the mood for it. She'd better be patient for now.
Alice banished these thoughts and slowly moved forward, closely following the only faint, warm white light in the darkness that almost swallowed her.
This part of the journey was probably the most difficult.
In this room filled with countless fine threads, which themselves moved and swayed like living beings, there was almost no path for people to walk. If it weren't for the sacred object in the hands of the chosen one, which seemed to calm the threads, Alice had no doubt that she would be captured and sealed by the threads the moment she fell into the darkness, and then fall into eternal darkness.
However, she wasn't too worried.
Tap, tap, the sound of her footsteps on the stone steps was incredibly clear, as if it could echo layer upon layer in the vast space deep underground.
The downward-extending stone steps finally came to an end. The chosen one, sword in hand, turned right into one of the stone chambers and stopped before a simple, almost ancient stone table and chairs.
Although the view was still dark, Alice noticed that the thin black lines did not enter the room; the darkness before her was simply pure darkness, invisible to ordinary people.
"This place and time is a secret that can only be reached with the power of the goddess. Please sit down, sir. At least for now, we are not enemies. We can exchange opinions with words instead of force."
Kreste Cecima placed a silver-white metal briefcase on the table, opened its lid, and put away the bone sword in his hand. His movements were unhurried, and his tone was calm and composed.
"You have an excellent array design master, making such efficient use of a high-quality active material!"
After roughly understanding the design concept of the underground array of this church, Alice couldn't help but praise him before sitting down at the stone table, which was illuminated by a lustrous white light. Her voice still showed little tension.
"Alright, having gone to such lengths to bring me here, what... or rather, what does your goddess want to know from me?"
After a moment of seemingly thoughtful silence, Krestai nodded slightly, remaining standing as he reached inside his trench coat and retrieved several envelope-sized objects, placing them one by one before the young lady.
"The first thing."
Knowing that even without the illumination of the bone sword, the other party, who also possessed darkvision, could see the scenes projected onto these black and white photographs, Krestai did not slow his speech, calmly recounting the events.
"In the vicinity of the winery on the southwestern outskirts of Connaught City, you engaged in a battle. The aftermath of this battle caused the plants in the woodland near that estate to overgrow over several weeks, gradually evolving into the appearance depicted in these photographs."
He silently pointed to several photographs on the table, each revealing a completely different scene in turn.
The first photo appears to have been taken from a wide-open distance. The left side shows extremely short, almost miniature, sparse woodland, while the right half of the image features towering giant trees that rise from the ground, creating a stark contrast to the shrub-like trees on the left.
In the second photo, three people, their faces hidden, stand with their backs to the camera, hands clasped together in front of an incredibly thick tree trunk; even then, they cannot encircle the enormous tree.
In the third photo, a giant, snake-like grapevine bears honeycomb-like fruit, beneath which a badger-like animal with two unusual heads and many arthropod legs is feeding.
The fourth, the fifth…
"These are all… the aftermath of the battle?" Alice stared at these bizarre scenes that seemed out of place in the ordinary eye, her expression gradually turning astonished.
Krestai nodded unmoved and sat down on the stone bench directly opposite the girl:
"Your Excellency was arrested... The day after Your Excellency left the manor, the plants began to mutate. Although it's incredible, it's clear that it's all related to Your Excellency—" "
I did use a little bit of nature... well, according to your understanding, it should be life-related magic, but those were just simple spells like making vines grow longer and thorns grow in the forest. It couldn't possibly have caused this kind of impact on the entire area."
Although she did have a bad feeling at the time, so she quickly changed her tactics and stopped using such spells, it was still far from enough to cause this forest to mutate into the way it looks in the photo!
After Alice finished defending herself, she heard the chosen one opposite her remain silent for a while before speaking in a slightly low voice.
"So, according to your meaning, you possess a portion of the magic of the life realm... rather than using some extraordinary item."
...Should she change her story to this at the last minute? What's wrong with the life realm? Aren't there deities among the true gods who wield corresponding authority, like the Earth Mother Goddess symbolizing harvest?
Alice certainly knew how she should behave in front of the representative of the native gods of this world to deceive them like a true witch.
But that would be wrong.
She might be able to deceive the god's representative, but how confident was she in fooling the goddess behind him?
This wasn't her first encounter with a god-like being, though it was experience accumulated in another world. The things and qualities valued by righteous gods, whose doctrines leaned towards order and goodness, were always so similar.
So Alice decided to show Him the truth.
At least a part of the truth, such as the natural magic she had sealed away until now.
But why did this chosen one of the goddesses of night react this way?
Under the girl's bewildered gaze, Kreste Cecima frowned, her expression cold, and asked:
"First thing... Your Excellency, what is your relationship with 'Mother'?"